Shruti Dandekar, the Digital Women’s Award winner in the disruption category, is an architect who found her calling in portrait quilting, a few years ago. In the process of working and blogging, she also started working towards helping creative women entrepreneurs start their successful home-based businesses. She started “13 Woodhouse Road” in 2011. In an interview, Dandekar talks about her passion, venture and more!

“Basically I am an architect. I gave up my career in architecture to pursue my passion that is quilting.”

2014 was the year when Dandekar converted her passion into a business venture.

Starting early

“I had been an entrepreneur right since I was 13,” Dandekar says. She describes how that was when she first started her venture of making and selling Diwali lanterns. “From there to making quilts and making portraits out of quilts and representing three international brands as a brand ambassador and also on being on the board of directors of an international organization has been a very fascinating journey for me also.”

Dandekar attributes her achievements to the fact that she was able to pursue her passion. “So I did not have to ever work for money. So I could put in 100% of the efforts without it feeling like work.”

On her recent work

She is currently working on a quilt project that is a ‘larger than life’, sized 21 ft x 8 ft. She says by the end of that project, she would have completed over 600 hours of work! Even after working continuously for around 10-15 hours day, Dandekar says she doesn’t feel tired at all.

What according to you, holds women back?

“We do not realize our own potential and we always think of others before we think of what we want,” says Dandekar.

Elaborating on her point, she cites an example on how even while cooking food, we first think of what other members like than what we like.

“If you ask me what is my favourite song to play in a car while driving I might not even remember. Because every time we play the song that my son likes or my husband likes.”

She further says sometimes, we have to put ourselves first and that will lead to knowing what we want to do.

“I started meditating around one-and-a-half-years back and that has helped me a lot – concentrating on myself and thinking about what I want myself to be doing and then pursuing that.”

Dandekar is a true inspiration to many who want to pursue their passion and starting their own business ventures.

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